After the storm: Did officials over-react?

The men who predicted New Orleans would be destroyed by "the mother of all storms" faced charges of over-reacting today as residents dusted themselves down and tried, with limited success, to pick their way home to the battered city.

A day after Hurricane Gustav swept through Louisiana, causing eight deaths and widespread storm damage – but crucially failing to produce any significant flooding – officials were forced to defend the decision to evacuate more than two million people.

“People have been asking: ‘was this a false alarm?’ But nothing could be further from the truth,” said Michael Chertoff, the US Homeland Security Secretary who helped oversee the biggest peace time evacuation in American history.

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“The reason you’re not seeing dramatic footage of rescues is because there was such a successful evacuation. The only reason we do not have people in grave danger, and more loss of life, is because people heeded the warnings from their governors and mayors, and parish mayors, to get out of town.”

Weary evacuees, who are holed-up in motels and rescue centres across the southern states of the USA, may see things differently. They learned that their homecoming could now be delayed several days as officials attempt to organise a “tiered return”

Emergency services say highways into Louisiana will remain closed to returning residents until further notice, with police lines in place to turn away any of the two million people now hoping to get back to their tattered properties.

Petrol stations remain empty across much of the region, they say, and any mass return could cause traffic chaos. An estimated 1.4 million homes are still without power, while the New Orleans sewage system has been damaged by the storm.

“This is still a very, very serious storm that has caused major damage in our state,” said Governor Bobby Jindal. “I would describe the evacuation process as the pre-game, pre-season. We’ve not even got to half time yet, in terms of the process of dealing with the damage caused by the storm.”

On the ground, though, there was growing scepticism about official claims. In the French Quarter of New Orleans, storm damage appeared to be only superficial and residents who ignored official warnings to leave had returned to local bars and restaurants.

Evacuees who rang friends for an eye-witness report were told that the city was safe to return to, and relatively unscathed. In Finnegan’s Easy, an Irish bar off Bourbon Street, staff were even handing out free Irish Car-Bombs – a sickly cocktail containing Guinness and curdled Baileys – to patrons toasting its survival.

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, millions prepared to spend another night far away from home. Some are concerned about the prospect of looting at their now-empty properties, while others are simply uncomfortable. Fights broke out at an overcrowded shelter in Shreveport.

Police said there had so far been just two arrests for looting, thanks to the 4,000 National Guard troops drafted into Louisiana to keep order. An additional 400 federal law-enforcement agents arrived in the New Orleans metropolitan area today.

Hurricane Katrina killed 1,800 people in 2005, and with that nightmare still fresh in people’s minds, few will criticise the authorities for taking the threat of Gustav seriously.

However many now feel that the apocalyptic manner in which they were told to flee was irresponsible.

Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans whose dramatic press conference on Saturday predicting the “storm of the century” created gridlock on local highways, may have the most to lose from any backlash.

His speech contained several factually incorrect statements about the size and footprint of the storm, and its tone was criticised for preventing an orderly evacuation.

However he has since denied accusations of attempting to manage the crisis to political ends

“I would not do a thing differently,” he said. “I'd probably call Gustav, instead of the mother of all storms, maybe the mother-in-law or the ugly sister of all storms.”